Cornhill Magazine
Encyclopedia
Victorian literature
Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria . It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century....
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
and literary journal named after Cornhill Street in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith
George Murray Smith
George Murray Smith was the son of George Smith who with Alexander Elder started the Victorian publishing firm of Smith, Elder & Co.. His brainchild, The Cornhill Magazine, was the premier fiction-carrying magazine of the 19th century.The firm was extremely successful. G. M...
in 1860 and was published until 1975. It was a literary journal with a selection of articles on diverse subjects and serialisations of new novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s. Smith hoped to gain some of the same readership enjoyed by All the Year Round
All the Year Round
All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. Edited by Dickens, it was the direct successor to his previous publication Household Words, abandoned due to...
, a similar magazine owned by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, and he employed as editor William Thackeray, Dickens' great literary rival at the time.
The magazine was phenomenally successful, selling many more issues than anyone had thought likely, but within a few years circulation dropped rapidly. It also gained a reputation for rather safe, inoffensive content in the late Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
. A mark of the high regard in which it was held was its publication of Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands by Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
. The stories were often illustrated and it contained works from some of the foremost artists of the time including: George du Maurier
George du Maurier
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...
, Edwin Landseer, Frederic Leighton, and John Everett Millais
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
. Some of its subsequent editors included G. H. Lewes, Leslie Stephen
Leslie Stephen
Sir Leslie Stephen, KCB was an English author, critic and mountaineer, and the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.-Life:...
, Ronald Gorell Barnes, James Payn
James Payn
James Payn , was an English novelist.-Family:Payn's father, William Payn , was clerk to the Thames Commissioners and at one time treasurer to the county of Berkshire...
, Peter Quennell
Peter Quennell
Sir Peter Courtney Quennell CBE was an English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, poet, and critic....
and Leonard Huxley
Leonard Huxley (writer)
Leonard Huxley was an English schoolteacher, writer and editor.- Family :His father was the zoologist Thomas Henry Huxley, 'Darwin's bulldog'. Leonard was educated at University College School, London, St. Andrews University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He first married Julia Arnold, daughter of...
.
Important works serialised in the journal include:
- Framley ParsonageFramley ParsonageFramley Parsonage is the fourth novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It was first published in serial form in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860.-Synopsis:...
by Anthony TrollopeAnthony TrollopeAnthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire... - Wives and DaughtersWives and DaughtersWives and Daughters is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866...
by Elizabeth GaskellElizabeth GaskellElizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era... - The White CompanyThe White CompanyThe White Company is a historical adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle set during the Hundred Years' War. The story is set in England, France, and Spain, in the years 1366 and 1367, against the background of the campaign of Edward, the Black Prince to restore Peter of Castile to the throne of the...
and J. Habakuk Jephson's StatementJ. Habakuk Jephson's Statement"J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" is an 1884 short story by a then-young Arthur Conan Doyle, loosely based on the real mystery of the abandonment of the Mary Celeste, published anonymously in the January 1884 issue of the respected Cornhill Magazine. One reviewer sought to attribute the story to...
by Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan DoyleSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger... - The Ring and the BookThe Ring and the BookThe Ring and the Book is a long dramatic narrative poem, and, more specifically, a verse novel, of 21,000 lines, written by Robert Browning...
by Robert BrowningRobert BrowningRobert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:... - TithonusTithonusIn Greek mythology, Tithonus or Tithonos was the lover of Eos, Titan of the dawn. He was a Trojan by birth, the son of King Laomedon of Troy by a water nymph named Strymo . The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus as a rhapsode, as the lyre in his...
by Alfred Tennyson - Washington SquareWashington Square (novel)Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father...
by Henry JamesHenry JamesHenry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.... - RomolaRomolaRomola is a historical novel by George Eliot set in the fifteenth century, and is "a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view". It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August 1863...
by George EliotGeorge EliotMary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era... - Far from the Madding CrowdFar from the Madding CrowdFar from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. Critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive...
by Thomas HardyThomas HardyThomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a... - Unto This LastUnto This LastUnto This Last is an essay on economy by John Ruskin, first published in December 1860 in the monthly journal Cornhill Magazine in four articles. Ruskin says himself that these articles were "very violently criticized", forcing the publisher to stop the publication after four months. Subscribers...
by John RuskinJohn RuskinJohn Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political... - ArmadaleArmadale (novel)Armadale is a mystery novel by Wilkie Collins.-Plot summary:The novel has a convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other...
by Wilkie CollinsWilkie CollinsWilliam Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces... - Emma (Posthumous Fragment) by Charlotte BronteCharlotte BrontëCharlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...